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Well, I’ve given myself a month break off from Dungeons & Zombies!!! and I’ve decided to put the game on hold. Not cancelled (maybe). Really, when I say this I just mean game development in general is a hobby I don’t have much time or interest for anymore.

Will it be worked on from time-to-time? Maybe, if I feel like it (I’m not ruling that out). I’ve been experimenting with other ideas that I like just as good or better, so if I do finish a game, I’ll let you guys know! Really, I prefer screwing around with ideas to finishing them.

I also just prefer making games instead of marketing them, and marketing them takes time and interest away from making them! Time is something I don’t have much of anymore, like I said. I had lots of that wonderful stuff over the summer, but not anymore. In the future, I’ll at least wait till I find the fun to start the marketing (and there’s another reason – I was starting to get fed up with Dungeons & Zombies!!! not being fun for so long). It didn’t help, of course, that there was little interest in the game to begin with, so I didn’t have much motivation.

See you guys later (when I’m near-finished making a game)! Sorry about that, but I had to do what I had to do.

Well, here I am for the once-a-month-ish game update, and I have to say that I’m in a bit of a rut right now. Progress on the game is slow (I’m not going to mention the changes because they’re all very miniscule, and not exciting). I’m busy and dissatisfied with the work so far, and frankly, bored. After all these months of work, the game isn’t even close to playable or fun. On top of all this, my free-time is minimal now, with work in the way. This brings me to a tough decision. Do I keep going, or not?

I’m glad I asked my buddies at the Engine 001 forums for advice because I might have jumped the gun a bit if I hadn’t. I let out all my thoughts, frustrations and hopes to them and they suggested I take a break for a month and come back to it to see if it’s worth it. Great idea, I decided. And so that is how it will be. For the most part, you won’t hear from me for a good month or so, and after the break is said and done, I’ll analyze everything and decide the game’s fate. For now, I’m better off stepping away from it, prototyping other ideas, etc.

Well, after last month sucking, and the surgery before that I had for a hernia and wisdom teeth removal, I am finally back in the game, quite literally.

It turns out the engine (Engine 001) I’m using and the new Dell computer I have aren’t exactly buddies. This is as far as me and Mike, the creator of the engine, could figure out. Unfortunately there isn’t much I can do there though, and this is a workaround. To fix that issue I mentioned last time, I simply had to disable the new lighting system and use the engine’s old one. No big loss there that I’ve seen. In fact, I can’t tell the difference, so that can be considered fixed.

I don’t know if I’m an idiot and didn’t notice before or if this computer handles the game even worse, because the performance was awful when I testing the game a couple weeks ago… like 5 FPS awful in some cases. It isn’t exactly a graphically-intense game, and I of course want it to work on as many (Windows – Engine 001 doesn’t yet support Linux or Mac) computers as possible. This led me to spending some time splitting the world map up into five parts. From a gameplay standpoint, the original single, huge map was pretty cool, but terribly running. From my standpoint, it performs better this new way and is easier to work on. I can also put more things in the maps without worrying so much about frame rate.

I’ve also started work on the magic system (of which there will be more than spells for combat), but I don’t have much to show since it’s basically a prototype for a single spell – Fire Missile, which is very much what it sounds like. You learn spells from reading scrolls, and of course you have to watch your MP. I can’t decide whether I want the MP to regenerate over time, how fast if it does, or if you need to carry some potions around. I’ll let you know when I decide.

I did tinker with the general combat system a bit, and the results are hilariously flawed, and will need more tinkering. Basically, combat didn’t have any weight to it before. You smacked your enemy and they stood as stiff as a board with their health tickering down. That isn’t any fun. Now you smack your enemy and they go flying literally miles away like they’re sliding on ice. Like I said, it needs more tinker.

On top of all this, I’ve done a few fixes to old scripts that didn’t work and worked on some other systems (of which they’re so insignificant I might as well not waste your time rambling about them). A lot of it was simply getting back the work I did that didn’t get backed up. It’s been decently productive, but I don’t have much time anymore for the game so don’t expect it any time soon. Thanks for your continued support and interest, and feedback is of course encouraged!

-Not long after that, my cat got shaved. Doom and gloom. Poor thing’s so skinny now, but she was so knotted up, it really had to be done. Why does that matter? It doesn’t really, but what happened after did.

-When I got back from the vet, I went on to enjoy some League of Legends, and halfway through my computer crashed. Like, just froze up, died and restarted. When it came on, it gave a message telling me my hard drive crapped out. After some investigation, it didn’t seem like a particularly easy fix, especially after seeing that none of the files on it were readable, so I ditched it and ordered a new one off of Dell Canada.

NOTE: I had my game backed-up on USBs. I’m not that nooby!

-The new computer was a good deal, with the price, graphics card (well, it’s integrated, but it’s a lot better than my old Windows 7 one!) and everything being great. Only downside was it came with Windows 8.1. Anyways, it took a couple weeks to arrive, and I then got all my old Steam stuff and whatever loaded on again. Back to game development again? Not quite!

-High school was once again back in and things were super busy, and I didn’t have the time to play around with my new computer much after that, and…

-When I finally did get to mess around with my new computer more, I soon found out that A: my Twitter account was hacked and I had to fix that, and B: Windows 8.1 and my game I’m developing don’t mix well together I guess…:

(Compare the screenshot below to the other screenshots I have posted – this doesn’t look right!)

So, what does all this mean for the game? Well, I have to sort this issue out first, and then find some time to work on it. So, in other words, progress has slowed down quite a bit, and all this homework isn’t helping. Thanks again for your interest and support.